ent. A
lump rose in his throat.

"Yes, go on," he said.

"It is a thing that does not happen once in most men's experience. I
have only seen one case before in all my practice and that was nothing
very serious. This is an extraordinary example. I need not remind you
of Sir Richard Calmady's accident and the subsequent operation?"

"Of course not--go on," Ormiston repeated.

"In both cases the leg is gone from here," the doctor continued, laying
the edge of his palm across the thigh immediately above the knee. "The
foot is there--that is the amazing part of it--and, as far as I can
see, is well formed and of the normal size; but so embedded in the
stump that I cannot discover whether the ankle-joint and bones of the
lower leg exist in a contracted form or not."

Ormiston poured himself out a glass of port. His hand shook so that the
lip of the decanter chattered against the lip of the glass. He gulped
down the wine and, getting up, walked the length of the room and back
again.

"God in heaven," he murmured, "how horrible! Poor Kitty, how utterly
horrible!--Poor Kitty."

For the baby, in his own fine completeness, he had as yet no feeling
but one of repulsion.

"Can nothing be done, Knott?" he asked at last.

"Obviously nothing."

"And it will live?"

"Oh! bless you, yes! It'll live fast enough if I know a healthy infant
when I see one. And I ought to know 'em by now. I've brought them into
the world by dozens for my sins."

"Will it be able to walk?"

"Umph--well--shuffle," the doctor answered, smiling savagely to keep
back the tears.

The young man leaned his elbows on the table, and rested his head on
his hands. All this shocked him inexpressibly--shocked him almost to
the point of physical illness. Strong as he was he could have fainted,
just then, had he yielded by ever so little. And this was the boy whom
they had so longed for then! The child on whom they had set such fond
hopes, who was to be the pride of his young mother, and restore the so
rudely shaken balance of her life! This was the boy who should go to
Eton, and into some crack regiment, who should ride straight, who was
heir to great possessions!

"The saviour has come, you see, Mr. March, in as thorough-paced a
disguise as ever saviour did yet," John Knott said cynically.

"He had better never have come at all!" Ormiston put in fiercely, from
behind his hands.

"Yes--very likely--I believe I agree," the doctor answered. "Only it
r